Death of a Whaler (7 page)

There are still the nights, too, merciless dark stretches, when he feels he is strung out on a rack, pinned down by sorrow. The agony of being the one still here. He spends some of these nights in the dinghy on the lawn, under a blanket, looking up at the sky, at the moonlight glazed across the ocean, grey clouds silhouetted silver. He tries not to, but inevitably he ends up asking himself questions, each one as white and hot and urgent as the next. Why did Nate have to come here of all places? Why did they have to work that day? Why couldn't he have picked up the knife later, instead of standing with it clutched in his hand like some keen butcher?

He wishes all kinds of different fates for himself and for Nate.

‘You are doomed, my pet,' Audrey had told him when he was eleven. Home from school with a bout of chickenpox, all itch and fever and headaches. Fresh out of a cold bath, Audrey had him by the arm and was roughly dabbing calamine lotion on his pox spots as he stood shivering.

‘Hold still, boy.' And, ‘Honestly! Why didn't you get this at preschool like every other bloody kid? I tried to expose you to it. Made you play with that Greerson kid when she had it, even. But did you? No.'

He remembers the sighing, the lipstick-stained cigarette between the fingers of the hand around his arm.

‘You are doomed.'

‘What, Mum?'

‘Call it a family curse.'

‘Mum?'

‘I need a drink.'

He had followed her into the kitchen. The familiar routine, the kettle boiling, the aroma of coffee, Audrey reaching to the top of the fridge for the whisky, with her sharp nails flicking the radio on. She had sat down at the kitchen table, had a long slurp of the coffee. The smell of the steam coming off it had made Flinch feel nauseous again.

‘I don't think I'm doomed, Mum.'

‘What would you know?'

The radio in the background blaring Perry Como.
Wanted, someone who kissed me. And held me
closely, then stole my heart…

‘I got a B for my assignment in social science last week.'

‘Yeah, well, that'll see you through life, won't it.'

Exhaling smoke. Wet rattle in her cough.

‘Come here, boy.'

He had moved to her lap and put his arms around her neck.

‘Now listen. Some are lucky, some aren't. You and me, we're the ones who aren't. Doesn't mean you can't give it a go, pet. But just don't get your hopes up, okay?'

Flinch had nodded but hadn't taken much notice. He had been focusing on drawing comfort from her warm body, trying to eke it out of her and into himself as if by osmosis.

Lately, Flinch has been taking more from the cake tin than he's been putting back. He knows he will soon need to find another job. He's been careful to build himself a reputation around town as a hard worker. Uncomplaining. Honest. Meticulous. He can't move fast because of the leg, so he's always depended on his ability to be careful. Listen. Watch his mouth.

He stuffs his wallet with a few notes. Coins in his pockets. Irons a shirt and drags a wet comb through his mop of hair. He looks at himself in the long oval mirror in Audrey's room. Sees what he always sees. Some sort of joke of a man. A cartoon figure, all just angles and sharp pointed bits crammed against each other on one side. A human accordion, half played. He takes the shirt off and folds it neatly on the bed. Digs his old blue singlet and checked flannelette shirt from the bottom of a pile of dirty laundry. May as well go fishing first.

He slams the door to the pastel house harder than he means to. Takes a deep breath of sea air. A goat eyes him suspiciously from a nearby patch of grass, a piece of orange twine hanging from its mouth like a string of spaghetti. The day is dazzling in its clarity, the ocean like shot silk. The glare is brilliant, yet Flinch can't help but stare, squinting, into its depths, the coral blue blending into azure, to navy, to black. Even from the pastel house, he can see sea turtles bob to the surface, their shells like glistening barrels, and huge manta rays rippling like dark cloaks among schools of fish.

He revs up Milly and heads to Belongil Beach. It's a good beach for finding the odd gutter, though Flinch doesn't like to wade too deeply into the surf. On this beach, sharks still patrol the back waters, having somehow retained a group memory of the bloody offal and off-cuts that used to filter down to the sea from the meatworks. It doesn't seem to worry the surfers, though Flinch keeps an eye on the waters for a steely fin just in case.

In the wet sand, Flinch digs a little hole and puts his right foot into it. This way, he can stand evenly. Both feet touching the ground with the same weight, at the same time. He can feel normal, though he knows that digging a hole to feel normal isn't normal. He tries not to think about it too hard.

It takes him a few hours standing thigh-deep with his line in the surf, his knees and that hip aching, his neck creaking when he moves it. He snaps the line once and loses the sinker, has to struggle through the soft sand back to his bait box to string up a new hook. But in the end he has a canvas bag full of fish. Gleaming bream, whiting, dart and flathead. It won't feed the thousands, but it will be enough for about ten or so people.

He hopes Karma will be impressed, anyway.

The desire to visit her had risen in him almost imperceptibly, gaining momentum as the weeks had passed until returning to the commune seemed an inevitability to which he had simply resigned himself. Surprised at his own willingness to leave the safety of the pastel house, he had lain awake recent nights examining the urge as a surgeon might, trying to dissect what it was about her that could lure him out of his isolation. Eventually he decided that it wasn't her, exactly, that he wanted to see. It was that she represented to him the commune, its essence, and in that environment lay the promise of acceptance. He could be new there. To her. Disown his past.

He smells like fish gut and he is covered up to the knees in a soft, damp layer of sand, but he doesn't even return to the pastel house to shower. Just empties the bag of fish into a styrofoam esky, throws his rod in the back of the ute and drives towards the hills.

Once over the range, the road winds through lush paddocks, cows hemmed in with barbed-wire fences, through clumps of red cedar, pockets of rainforest that spill onto the road, twisted grey roots exposed, gigantic fern prongs arching over from the escarpment above. Farmhouses the exact size and shape of one bedroom and a kitchen dot the paddocks, smoke rising from their crooked chimneys. The wind breathes on the tall grass on the hills and the land looks like it is moving, like a gently shaken rug, all ripple and gloss.

Flinch misses the entrance to the commune twice but eventually he notices the letterbox amid the overgrown grass. He follows the road in. A few days of rain have made it even more difficult to negotiate than last time and the ute slides off the track, bumping over exposed roots and into potholes more than a few times. Eventually, the field. He pulls up in the same place that he dropped Karma off the last time, and Milly lets out a long whistle that sounds like a sigh. He moves the esky full of fish to the cabin of the ute so that it is shaded, takes a deep breath and heads towards the commune.

He hobbles past the tents, yurts, open-roofed rooms made of hay bales. One large tepee has two open sides and inside it a group of women sit on cushions on the ground, stringing beads. In a hay-bale house, two men and a woman are leaning against the walls, eating a lunch of beans and rice and arguing vehemently. In another corner, a woman is nursing a baby, both breasts exposed. In the casuarina grove, hammocks are strung between the trunks and a man and woman sleep naked. Nobody pays attention to Flinch. He is used to standing out, and he is surprised to find this lack of interest liberating. Nobody asks him if he needs help and nobody looks at him as if he doesn't belong exactly where he is.

There seem to be fewer people here than he remembers from the last visit. Maybe they are starting to leave, heading back to more prosperous places. He thought it might happen eventually. Karma said it was paradise, and he's never heard of a paradise that stays that way.

He remembers the fish and decides he had better look for her, or Matt, so that he can give them the catch. He is pleased that he thought to bring something for them for dinner. At the pastel house, dinner is part of a small routine that he relishes, because it gives him a focus, something that has to be done regardless. He makes his meal as he listens to the news on the radio at six pm, mainly for the tide times, then eats at six-thirty pm, before retiring with a book and more often than not a nip or two of rum. Lately he has been using the photograph of Audrey as his bookmark.

He wanders around the commune maze for fifteen minutes before he realises that he will have to ask someone where Karma and Matt might be. He decides to approach the women who were stringing beads.

When he finds his way back to the tepee, the women have stopped beading and are sitting cross-legged in a circle, eyes closed, holding hands and humming. Inside the circle is a wooden crate, on the top of which is a little pot filled with sand and numerous multicoloured sticks of lit incense. The scent of lavender is overwhelming and, to Flinch's nose, a little sickly. He stands at the entrance, clutching the canvas flaps with his hand so that he can rest his leg. He doesn't know whether he should interrupt. He is still trying to decide when the incense finally gets to him and he sneezes loudly.

A few of the women open their eyes. One stares at him disapprovingly and he takes a small step back.

‘Can we help you, brother?' says another.

It takes Flinch a moment to realise she is addressing him.

‘Er, yeah. I'm looking for Karma.'His throat feels itchy and his voice comes out with a croak. He clears it. The disapproving woman sighs loudly and starts to look a little menacing. ‘Or Matt,' he adds.

‘They'd usually be around, brother. They must have gone into Nimbin,' says the woman. ‘You'll probably find them there.'

‘Thanks,' says Flinch. ‘Thanks very much.' Then, because he feels they are waiting for him to leave, ‘Carry on.'

He moves away as quickly as he can manage.

The town centre isn't far from the site of the commune. Though Nimbin itself is more of a village than a town. It consists of even fewer amenities than the bay. As early as the 1880s, there were facilities in Byron Bay for tourists and travellers. But the days of ladies with parasols promenading along the pier and big ships coming into port to impress the bystanders are long over. The Pier Hotel has since burnt to the ground, the Great Northern Hotel reduced to ash and rubble twice. Pubs have a way of catching fire in the bay. The area had still been popular with visitors before the pier washed away during a cyclonic storm that Flinch remembers from his childhood. (He and Audrey had hidden under the kitchen table as it raged outside the pastel house and threatened to tear the roof off. He had sung ‘Amazing Grace' while Audrey drank and swore. ) The sunbathers only stopped frequenting the local shores when the meatworks opened up, as the beaches reeked and the sharks shadowed the waters like stray dogs waiting to be tossed a bone.

Nimbin was simpler. One road split into two as it headed down the hill. Some sections lined with doorways and shopfronts. A general store that sold groceries and produce. A post office. A police station. A pub. A community hall. All the local farmers might need. Embracing the influx of youth and the business it promised, some Nimbin shopkeepers painted their shopfronts with bright cosmic murals. Slogans preaching peace and joy.

The town is more or less deserted. Flinch parks Milly on the side of the road and turns the engine off. At the end of the main street the town falls off abruptly into muddy paddocks strung up with barbed wire and rotting wooden fence posts. Karma and a few other women are walking out of a grocery store, carrying bags of grain and rice, heading in his direction, laughing and talking.

‘Hello!' says Flinch as they approach. A little too loudly.

‘Well, hello, Flinch,' says Karma. He is pleased she recognised him, remembered his name. But figures, too, that she probably doesn't meet a lot of cripples. ‘I've been wondering if you'd come to visit us.'

‘I went to Nim Eden,' says Flinch. ‘But you weren't there. Well, of course.' He shrugs his shoulders. ‘You were here.'

Karma smiles at him. It's a kind smile, Flinch thinks, though he can sense something like suspicion behind her eyes. He realises it was probably there when he met her last time, despite the carefree façade, the singing and stories. It remains even as her expression changes, as if she's always weighing and measuring in her mind, gauging the worth of people or situations. Today she is wearing a loose sleeveless white top and a long orange skirt. Small tufts of auburn hair sprout from her armpits. Like last time, the scent of frangipani.

‘How did you get here?'

‘I drove,' says Flinch.